Box with portrait of a woman

Box with portrait of a woman

Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The miniature is set in the lid of a tortoiseshell box with gold mounts; the sides and bottom of the box are painted blue with gold stars. The box bears the Paris discharge mark for 1775–81 and the French mark for small imported work, 1838–64. The discharge mark indicates that the miniature was painted at least nine years later than the completion of the box; the second mark shows that the box had been exported from France and was reimported around the middle of the nineteenth century. A somewhat similar miniature of a woman with a tricolored belt, signed and dated 1790, is in the Musée du Louvre.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Box with portrait of a womanBox with portrait of a womanBox with portrait of a womanBox with portrait of a womanBox with portrait of a woman

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.